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I suppose it can. There are legal companies that sell boilerplate contracts online like for a landlord/tenant, so people can print them out and use them for a fee. I don't suppose if another company sprang up and used their templates, those companies would be too happy. If the original companies wrote the templates themselves, I can't imagine why they wouldn't have a case.

Copyright violations and plagiarism are not the same thing. One has a narrow (or not so narrow) legal definition while the other is a common word indicating an generally unethical copying of work and presenting it as one's own. So IMO yes it can be plagiarized even if it isn't a legal issue.

Jeez, I thought "lazy" [outside of where it was necessary] was the right word as you can't by definition plagiarize your OWN WORKS.

In the academic world you can. Why do you think authors cite themselves, when referring to research they've previously published? If you couldn't plagiarize your OWN WORKS, they wouldn't bother to do so - at least if being lazy was the prime motivation for plagiarism.

Why isn't the boilerplate a copyrightable work? There are a million different ways to convey the intended message, and the one they chose is a matter of expression in the same way that a news article is.

That depends on country. For example, in Russia by law texts of all legal contracts and notices are out of copyright.

The only exception is contracts which are not yet used, which can be treated as literary works. I.e. if you ask a lawyer to write a contract then it'll be protected by copyright. But once you use this contract in a deal with a customer, this contract falls out of copyright. Your counterparty can freely post it, shamelessly plagiarize it and so on.

Not really, but it is still copyright infringement and hence you can be sued for it.

IANAL, but Wikipedia, the most reliable legal source known to man, says that plagiarism is not a legal concept, is not the same thing as copyright infringement, and is "concerned with the unearned increment to the plagiarizing author's reputation that is achieved through false claims of authorship".http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism#Legal_aspects [wikipedia.org]

Arguably if they are sending down a takedown notice, this is not about getting 'credit ' for authorship.
In fact they are not publishing anything when they send a takedown letter, or authorizing anything to be published.
So it is questionable that it could be called plagiarism when they aren't even publishing a work.

The letter has a specific utilitarian purpose, and while the sender may be signing a statement to swear in affirmation
to what the letter says is true...
Signing a legal statement does no

Especially when a contract that has been through the legal process of enforcement, suits, and all sorts of review shows that it is valid. The problem with writing a contract from scratch is that it is likely full of holes, poorly worded (and likely exploitable) phrases, and possible contradictions. If a contract has been through the wringer a couple of times in a court of law, then that's the one you want to use.

Right. The OP implied that it wasn't ironic because they copied text, but didn't accuse a copyright violation. It's humorous because it's an attempt to chill free speech, made by copying a letter from a site working against this.

Might as well save the money that a lawyer would charge to cut and paste this document.

On the flip side:

A. This is results in very asymmetric lawyer costs. The recipient is going to have to spend lawyer time to defend against it that the sender didn't just to send it.

B. By not spending time on a decent lawyer to ensure the takedown is unique and covers the case law for their own jurisdiction, Commodore may have unwittingly given up any legitimate rights they might have had in this dispute.

C. Lawyers are truly valuable at convincing clients to not start legal disputes. By not vetting this by

Uhhh...dude? It is just an Asian POS system that Commodore USA rebadged. If you'll head over to OSNews, site of the original article, they have a link to the POS website. All you get by buying it from Commodore USA is a sticker and a 40-60% markup.

I'm leery of any computer company based in Ft. Lauderdale Florida. Florida is the capitol of sleazy companies. And I'd be worried that the PCs on bootup would ask you whether you want to take a free, easy personality test too. (Okay, Ft L. is not Clearwater but ya never know...)

Yes, it's slightly amusing given the context but it's certainly not actionable. It's perfectly normal to copy a boilerplate legal notice from some template you found on the Internet and change it around to suit your purposes. Is anybody seriously suggesting that every DMCA takedown notice has to be originally written from scratch?

If you were sending out a legal letter about defamation, would you do so while indulging in copyright infringement?

Similarly, not only was the take down notice embarrassingly amateurish and potentially criminal, it was an attempt to take down an article that claimed they were embarrassingly amateurish and potentially criminals. I could definitely see this takedown notice being used by the defense in a civil proceeding to show the article's merit.

I'll go you one better. I think every legal notice should need to be written from scratch. There can be standardized language, but any and all legal notices should come from a lawyer, not a template or for-sale pre-written package. My reasons for wanting that have absolutely nothing to do with this story in any way, shape, or form, however. I want it so that there is greater specificity in legal notices given out, and that the merits are strongly considered before being issued.

There can be standardized language, but any and all legal notices should come from a lawyer, not a template or for-sale pre-written package.

So someone who does this as a hobby and can't afford a lawyer should be prevented from having the same right as coprorations?

Or, to look at it from the flip side, clever crooks get another loophole -- you can't hold them responsible for anything they say or write or sign, unless it's through a lawyer. "Y'r'onor, the sales contract for [something] wasn't signed by a rea

Yeah... and it's perfectly normal to copy clip art images from some template you found on the internet and use them on your web site too.
But some folks may still take exception [slashdot.org] to this.

For now, though, RIAA, MPAA, ASCAP, and patent trolls are the big thing, though, I guess.

But how long will it be seriously, before we have an association of legal/public document trolls?

They must find it sickening that sites like chilling effects are even allowed to exist.
And US code and the text of actual laws

As for any other document, you don't need to write it from scratch - you can reuse parts from documents you have previously written, or you may copy documents that the author has given you permission to copy and adapt - but you are not allowed to copy&adapt other authors works that you somehow downloaded from the internet.

Copyright applies to legalese letters in exactly the same manner as to novels or music.

We had it good for a while, but the powers that be want the old structure back. You'll be able to talk trash on some small, out of the way website, but if it's large and part of the "new media" they'll want it to play by the old rules; meaning, he who has the gold, rules. You don't have to hire lawyers, just cut-and-paste a threat.

The "powers that be" in this particular case is some guy in Florida who buys China Ubuntu boxes, slaps a Commodore sticker on them and sells them as Commodore machines. It's not some Fortune 100 company, it's a dude who runs the business out of his furniture warehouse. He hasn't even filed a suit or hired a lawyer, so it's the internet equivalent of "Take that back." I don't think this particular incident is terribly good proof that "He who has the gold makes the rules."

I mean, right now I could paste some legal jargon into this post demanding that you admit your statement was injurious to me, and it wouldn't really indicate anything at all about our legal system.

On the other hand, your taking the action of pasting "some legal jargon into this post" might be a seen as an indicator that the U.S. legal system has become so seriously flawed that those who wish to abuse it feel no compunction against doing so, while those who take the pasted "legal jargon" seriously may be doing so because they are only too aware that the U.S. legal system has indeed been weaponized.

Yay!!! Thank you for this story! Whatever your point is or the controversy is supposed to be, all that matters is that I now know that there is movement again on the Commodore/Amiga front. Who knows when I would have learned about any of this otherwise? CommodoreUSA owes you a debt of gratitude for this advertising I'm sure.

Most of what brought me into the computer age was my C64 and later my Amiga. Many today won't have been old enough to remember that computer/software/game stores like Software Etc. in the malls at one point were at least half Amiga software, written by Microsoft even. If that oil barron hadn't bought out Commodore and purposely run it into the ground to bankrupt it Commodore would have shaped the entire computer industry!

Today a computer is a computer, but back then an Amiga was so far ahead of everything else it was amazing! A fully windowed multitasking color OS that was easy to use 10 years before Windows 95. Think about that shit. Even Billy Gates was writing software for it. God, what could have been... And the games for it were amazing, and not just for when they came out.

I'll have to read up on what the new version of the company is up to but good luck to them. Years ago I thought about how Amiga would be the perfect way to reintroduce the concept of a complete computer in a keyboard etc. I'm gratified to see that someone else had the same idea and dream. I hope it succeeds in some way.

If that oil barron(sp) hadn't bought out Commodore and purposely run it into the ground to bankrupt it Commodore would have shaped the entire computer industry!

So you're saying the whole computer industry would now be companies producing machines made of glued together proprietary custom chips, which was the architecture of the Amiga. We should thank said 'oil baron' then.

So you're saying the whole computer industry would now be companies producing machines made of glued together proprietary custom chips,

Where are you getting your non-proprietary chips from? It doesn't matter whether you buy from Intel, AMD or any other chip maker. The chips in your computer are patented, trademarked and copyrighted out the wazoo.

It's too bad they're not using that Inferno stuff or whatever it's called now that was planned for the new Amiga OS 4 (or was it 5/6?). It is/was kind of an interesting design. It basically uses a VM assembly language to distribute all code and it's compiled on the fly for the local processor (sort of like a modern JIT'd language but lower level). Either that or use a BeOS-like system (Haiku or whatever). Either of those would be better than AROS. Hell, Linux would be better than AROS.

These days, if you want to distribute any sort of a non-mainstay "VM assembly" and wish for it to gain any sort of acceptance, it better be LLVM bitcode. Either that, or stick to CLR or JVM. It takes way too much work to create a half-decent optimizing backend, when starting from scratch.

Amiga has been on the point of resurrection for nearly two decades now. It has never happened. The idea of an Apple-like rebirth was being seriously discussed in the late 90s: products were even planned. As a little historical curiousity, this video, Back for the Future [google.com], was doing the rounds amongst Amigans. It even seemed like it might happen for a while. But the "year of the Amiga desktop" has been and gone.

Like you say, Commodore is just a brand now. You can find Commodore machines in PC World. They ar

Unless proven otherwise, I'm assuming for now that Commodore USA is, at best, a hoax, and at worst, a very inept con.

If you're going to claim someone's business is somewhere between a hoax and a con, you'd better have something better than supposition based off a legal settlement and your subjective opinion of the company's website.

It's called libel, and it's not free speech- and the author seems to be assuming they're guilty until proven innocent. He's got no right to complain abou

He didn't saying that Commodore USA is a hoax or con merely that he is "assuming" they are, which I presume is a way of trying to say he will treat them with such skepticism in his actions. While probably not the clearest wording those still mean different things. Something like the difference between writing"Joe is a murderer." and "Until proven otherwise, I am going to assume Joe committed the murder."

Weasel words work if correct. If you are the one and only one person that thinks Jeb Bush is really a Martian, and you announce "Jeb is allegedly a Martian" with no other sources, then you, in fact, called him a Martian. If you say, "I believe that Jeb appears to be of Martian heritage." Then you likely weaseled your way into giving a non-professional opinion on the matter, which is mostly protected (baring things like actual malice). If someone else told you he was definitely a Martian, then "Jeb is alle

In five minutes worth of googling, I found : Barry's homepage, a page [bcpa.net] showing he doesn't own the "building" for his world headquarters, two press release articles showing he likely has the licensing rights, wikipedia articles not edited by him saying he owns the company etc, and three engadget [engadget.com] pages which showed the guy has been working this deal since 2009. He began selling machines, and after Commodore Gaming [engadget.com] said he didn't have the rights back in April he updated his site to indicate that he didn't yet

The words "I'm assuming" change the sentence from a potentially libelous statement about Commodore USA to a factual statement about the author's opinions and thus make the statement not libel (at least in the USA).

He never claimed they were a hoax. He claimed he is assuming they are a hoax. Under US law, "I believe they are a hoax" is not libel even when "They are a hoax" is.

If you're going to claim someone's business is somewhere between a hoax and a con, you'd better have something better than supposition based off a legal settlement and your subjective opinion of the company's website.

I am a Nigerian Prince who needs your help.... Now I know what your thinking, but you'd better not say it because that would be libelous.

See how that works? Do you think people shouldn't be able to call a scam, a scam?

On less straightforward fronts, The Phantom console [wikipedia.org] was an outright scam and The Gizmondo [wikipedia.org] was a way of laundering money. Both of these smelled incredibly fishy to tech journalists. And a properly informing press would tell their clients that neither of these developers seemed on the up-and-up. For the first year or two the press gave The Phantom a mostly free pass, allowing investors to be suckered into pouring money into an organization that didn't seem to be producing anything other than doctored scree

Statements of opinion are not libel; to qualify as such, they must be malicious, knowingly false statements of "fact."

"SuperBanana is a child molester" can be libel. "I think SuperBanana is a child molester because I saw him talking to some kids on a playground" is not. (Unless of course you never did any such thing -- then it's an entirely different ballgame.)

So far as I'm concerned, "Unless proven otherwise, I'm assuming for now" is sufficiently opinion to qualify for protection, particularly when h

What does that have to do with anything? Is Commodore USA based in Georgia? Why would the "official code of Georgia" apply? (I'm not criticizing you, just wondering stuff without going to read TFA or do any background checking on Commodore USA....)

I was on a mobile device at the time and download times are a mess on it, that's why I didn't. Had I been on a PC, I would have chased the link.;)

The presence of OCGA gives support to the idea that this guy just copy and pasted it.

It also lends credence to the hypothesis that the person/people that sent the message from Commodore USA are complete and utter dolts. If they aren't going to read (and re-read) documents they are sending out that might carry any legal weight, then they certainly shouldn't be trusted with anything that is going to be court-bound. One simple oversight could mak

What does that have to do with anything? Is Commodore USA based in Georgia? Why would the "official code of Georgia" apply? (I'm not criticizing you, just wondering stuff without going to read TFA or do any background checking on Commodore USA....)

The letter the Commodore CEO copied had been sent to a company based in Atlanta - so leaving the "OCGA references in there 1) was just stupid; and 2) basically showed the CEO had no idea what the letter actually meant.

FWIW I agree with your fundamental point - these Slashdot submissions should actually spell out what the non-obvious acronyms stand for because 1) the reader shouldn't have to follow several links just to find out about some tangential info, and 2) then the submitters would learn something (I

The top CGI picture of an Amiga with a CD-ROM, at http://www.commodoreusa.net/products.html [commodoreusa.net], I recognize from an Amiga forum from at least 3 years ago. It was made by a forum user, not any employee of Amiga or related company.

Are you referring to the Amiga Fantasy pictures, located at http://aminet.net/pix/trace/AMIGA-fantasy1.jpg http://aminet.net/pix/trace/AMIGA-fantasy2.jpg and http://aminet.net/pix/trace/AMIGA-fantasyB.jpg which were uploaded back in 1999 to http://aminet.net ?

That's extremely damning. For those following along at home, this [commodoreusa.net] is the image up on Commodore USA's website, and this [aminet.net] is the original image from ten years ago. The difference? The image up on Commodore USA's website has a bad photoshop hack job of removing the word "fantasy" from the top right of the keyboard, and the word fantasy from the mouse cord (and the cord itself). It still attributes the image to Marko Hirv.

I don't think there can be more irrefutable proof that this is a scam.

I'm especially liking the fact that they forgot to photoshop out the mouse cable going into the back of the system, it's rendered with a CRT (a pretty small one at that) and the disk in the tray is a CDR. They really are going for the retro look & feel.

Marko Hirv probably has sufficient evidence to sue Commodore USA for copyright infringement on this image.

I don't quite know US laws, but under Dutch laws (which, AFAIK, are pretty much similar to most of the western world), Marko Hirv could probably also sue Commodore USA for altering his artistic vision.

Actually, mr. Hirv would probably be wise to accept a financial settlement, but a lawsuit would be funnier for the rest of us.